Hacker News Reader

Beyond Google Fi and T-Mobile, this story has made me suddenly much more apprehensive about picking up SIM cards from some local MVNO when traveling. What’s to stop a local operator from locking my phone and leaving an unpleasant surprise waiting when I get home?

And now I also have to wonder: do eSIMs have the same vulnerability to bad-actor carriers? Is this a risk with any of the companies Airalo has partnered with?

View on HN

It can only ever happen when the phone is first activated. So if you have already used the phone with another carrier's SIM card, you are good to go.

It's not an issue of the carrier locking it. Right now there is no mechanisim for an arbitrary carrier to issue a lock command through SIM or otherwise. The issue is that the iPhone hardware itself was watching for insertion of a SIM and locking itself to the first SIM inserted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com